Pioneer
XDP-100R
Smartphones
are taking over the world, and their proliferation is making these WiFi-only
products quite unnecessary. But manufacturers are not giving up just yet. Music
player makers like Pioneer are turning to an audience that just might be worth
targeting – audiophiles.
The
all-new Pioneer XDP-100R Android music player promises audio quality no average
smartphone is able to achieve. Packed within its guts you can find enough audio
power to blow your ears away. For starters, the unit supports DSD, DSF,
DSD-IFF, MQA, FLAC, ALAC, WAV, AIFF, Ogg Vorbis-, MP3 and AAC formats. The
company has also added a second processing unit just to run audio components.
As a result, the company claims digital noise will be done away with. The
XDP-100R can also play a frequency range from 20 to 80,000 Hz.
Pioneer isn’t being too open about the specs and with good reason.
This product is not for performance users! What we do know is that it has a
4.7-inch 720p display and 32 GB of internal storage to fit all your songs. If
that is not enough, it’s possible to expand the memory via a couple microSD
slots, each supporting cards of up to 128 GB. That’s a hell of a lot of
storage, but it will fill up quickly if you store plenty of high-definition
music in there.
Overall,
the design looks very interesting and you can compare the build quality to what
Sony has done with the NW-ZX2 Walkman. The Pioneer XDP-100R is made of aluminum
and features a sturdy, but bulky body. Measurements come in at 128.9 × 75.9 × 13 mm.
Did
the Pioneer XDP-100R catch your eye (or ear)? It’s certainly not cheap, but it
also won’t break the bank like Sony’s option, which costs well over a grand.
Pioneer’s high definition music player is to be released for about US$ 500 in
Japan, starting November.
